


Peacemas: A Doctor Who Christmas Story

by betawho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Christmas, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betawho/pseuds/betawho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Martha arrive on a future colony world and are taken in by a colonial farming family for Peacemas. But some strange sandy patches have been showing up around the farm. And the farmer's three year old son goes missing. The Doctor has seen something like this before. Happy Peacemas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** Peacemas **

—

“You landed in a forest in the middle of the night!” Martha complained.

“It was bound to happen sometime,” the Doctor said.

Martha picked a cocklebur off her pantleg and glared at him, even if he _was_ letting her lean on his arm. “So where are we?” she said, disgruntled.

“Dalmorion. Earth colony world. Every once in a while, Earth explodes with colonists going out in all directions, like fluff off a dandelion,” the Doctor explained. “The result is dozens of worlds in early stages of colonial development.”

“So you landed us on a sparsely populated planet in the middle of a forest,” she said sarcastically. She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Are there even any people near here?”

“Bound to be. Look, there’s light ahead.”

The lights turned out to be a large family settlement, a large main house with rough ancillary cabins for extended family members.

When they walked up, they found a man on a ladder hanging a string of multicolored lights. He saw them and waved. “Hello,” he smiled. “Happy Peacemas!”

The Doctor perked up and waved back, grinning, obviously pleased. “Happy Peacemas!” he called back.

“Peacemas?” Martha asked.

“Later,” the Doctor muttered quietly, still smiling as the man clambered down from his ladder and strode to them, arms outstretched. He was a tall, burly man with thick black hair. He had the ropy forearms and calloused hands of a farmer. He shook the Doctor’s hand heartily and shook Martha’s when the Doctor introduced them.

“Welcome, welcome. I’m Logan. Come in, we have Soothe and ale and Peacemas cookies,” the man said, and he herded them jovially inside.

The house was a second generation colonial dwelling, the original spartan prefab shelter having been built onto and expanded with natural wood and stone. Virtually every interior wall and lintel was draped with chains of flowers and fruit, interwoven with greenery and colored lights. The scents of warm chocolate, cinnamon, and vanilla wafted through the air from the kitchen at the back, and a huge log burned brightly in a large stone fireplace that took up most of one wall.

“Guests!” a middle aged woman cried happily as she emerged from the kitchen, she wiped flour-stained hands on her apron and came toward them with arms wide. She hugged them both, kissing their cheeks. “Happy Peacemas!”

Martha stared at the Doctor at this unusual welcome, but rather than looking uncomfortable he was grinning like a loon and hugged the woman back. Martha wondered if he knew them. He hadn’t mentioned knowing anyone on the planet.

“The Saint!” a high pitched young voice yelled in awe.

The Doctor and Martha turned to see a three year old boy standing on the wooden stairway leading to the upper levels. The boy scrambled down the stairs and ran up to the Doctor, planting his pudgy, sturdy little body in front of him and staring up at the Doctor with awe. He had baby brown hair and big blue eyes wide with wonder.

The Doctor threw back his head and laughed, a big-bellied laugh of sheer delight that Martha had never heard from him before.

The little boy’s eyes went huge.

The child’s father laughed and scooped his son up, twirling him around. “No, he’s not the Saint, Toby. The Saint doesn’t come until all good little boys are tucked up in their beds asleep.” He bounced his son in his arms. “And you have been a good boy this year, haven’t you?”

The boy stared at the Doctor over his father’s shoulder and nodded solemnly.

The father noticed the direction of his son’s stare. “Sorry about that,” he said, turning to face them. “He’s excited about Peacemas.”

The Doctor grinned and shook his head. “I’ve definitely been called worse.”

“Come, come.” The woman waved them in. “Into the kitchen. I’m Marta, by the way.” The little boy dashed past her. “Mind you leave some biscuits for our guests, Toby.”

The friendly couple herded the Doctor and Martha into the sweet-smelling kitchens and plied them with Peacemas cookies and Soothe, which turned out to be hot cocoa, to Martha’s delight.

“So, are you on planet for the holidays?” the man asked, finishing off his cookie and washing it down with the light, golden mead that passed for Peacemas ale here.

“Might as well be,” the Doctor shrugged. “We were just traveling. Thought we’d stop and see the planet.”

“No relatives here then?” the woman asked.

The Doctor shook his head. Martha noticed that, for once, the mention of relatives didn’t bother him.

“Then you must pass Peacemas with us!” The man swept his arms wide in a gesture of generosity. “We’re having a huge party tomorrow for Peacemas Eve, and everyone in the neighborhood will be coming. You’re welcome to join us. There will be gifts and games and singing and food and the Ceremony of Lights at midnight. Which reminds me, I’d better finish getting the lights up or there will be hell to pay.” He peeked sneakily at his wife out of the corner of his eye. She saw it and popped him with the end of her tea towel. He grinned smugly.

“Can we help?” the Doctor offered.

The man unstraddled his backwards chair and stood up. “Gladly. Many hands make light work.”

“Come on, Martha.” The Doctor took her elbow and herded her out of the kitchen, both of them pretending not to notice as the man kissed his wife before following them.

 

“Peacemas? Is that like Christmas?” Martha asked once they were outside out of earshot.

“Sort of. Remember, we’re centuries after your time, traditions have changed a lot. Peacemas is the celebration of generosity and peace. Also known as the Festival of Lights.”

“Hence the lights,” Martha said, looking at the large boxes of tangled light strings they’d found sitting in front of the house.

“Exactly.” The Doctor beamed and bounced on his toes. “I _love_ Peacemas!”

Logan joined them, and between the three of them they decorated the whole compound. It seemed his mother and father, and several cousins all shared the homestead, each with their own cabin around three sides of the central square. They were off visiting other relatives at the moment, or shopping at the spaceport, buying last minute supplies and presents.

Martha found that even with centuries of advancement, Christmas lights still ended up in a tangled knot when stored, and it took a lot of patient unravelling and a few judicious bursts from the sonic screwdriver to shake them loose.

The lights themselves were fascinating. They came in every shape under the sun. There were normal bulb shapes of various sizes, but also blob shapes, humanoid shapes, star shapes, curlicues. Every possible permutation.

They wrapped the boles of the trees with webs of fiber optic lights. They draped the windows with holographic projection lights. And they outlined every curve, corner, and eave with strings of lights. Logan handed them up from the ladder while the Doctor scampered across the roofs like a spider-monkey attaching them.

They fussed with the placement and drape of the lights for a good hour before Logan pronounced himself satisfied.

The Doctor handed Martha the end of the first light string. “Would you plug that in?” He nodded to an outlet near the bottom of the front door. It took a broken fingernail before Martha realized the plastic child safety cap on the outlet didn’t pry off, but slid downwards on a hinge. The outlet underneath was a flat disk of metal with no place to “plug” anything into. She looked at the plug on the end of the string and found it was an identical flat metal disk. Shrugging, she pressed it to the “outlet”, where it stuck magnetically. Simple. A closer look at the safety cover showed it had a slit at the top just wide enough to allow it to be slid back up over the contact point. She did, seeing that it assured the magnetic contacts wouldn’t slip loose, and allowed the string to emerge from the top. A nice, simple bit of engineering.

The Doctor was grinning at her when she turned around. She realized he’d been watching her figure out the plug. Like a grownup watching a child figure out a new toy. She shrugged and smiled back. “It’s elegant.”

He nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He swiveled and looked out over the compound, surveying the lights. Martha realized they weren’t on.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, looking back down at the plug.

“No. They won’t turn the lights on until later. Should be splendid, though.”

Logan finished pushing the empty boxes up against the side of the house and dusted his hands off with satisfaction. “A job well done. Thank you. And unless I miss my guess it should be just about...”

“Dinnertime!” Marta shouted from the open front door.

Logan grinned, as if he’d planned it. “Come on.” He waved at the Doctor and Martha. “It’s just potluck tonight, with all the cooking needed for tomorrow. But Marta is the best cook on the planet.” He slapped his firm stomach. He wasn’t fat, but he was a solidly built man. A man used to hard work, good food, and a good life.

They dined on homemade soup that had been simmering on the back of the stove all day. And reconstituted dinner rolls which Martha had been amazed to see start out as a packet of six individually sealed pills, that Marta tossed into a device that looked like a microwave, turned a dial and walked off. Martha watched through the device door, fascinated, as the packet of pills burst open and grew into large fluffy dinner rolls, browning as she watched. The device dinged, and Marta transferred the rolls to a cloth draped wicker basket. There was no sign of the plastic packaging.

Martha turned to the Doctor. “I could use one of those in my flat.”

He grinned at her. “I’ll put it on your Peacemas list.”

He turned back to his discussion with Logan, and Martha looked across the table at Toby. The little boy was sitting, slowly eating a gingerbread cookie, his eyes never leaving the Doctor.

After dinner, they spent the rest of the evening sitting around the fireplace. It was odd for Martha, accustomed to the noise and bustle of London happening around her at all hours, or the constant background hum of the Tardis. But here it was quiet. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and their own voices, punctuated by the occasional creak of the rocking chair the Doctor sat in.

Martha listened with interest to Logan’s tales of coming to Dalmorion as a teenager with his parents to settle. It was an odd combination of high tech - spaceships, hypersleep, testing for local allergies and the practical and legal battles of claiming a homestead - and the long, but satisfying work of taming the land and building a home.

As she listened to his deep voice, and his obvious love of the land, Martha looked over and grinned to see that somehow, Toby had crawled, unnoticed, up onto the Doctor’s lap. He was sitting there, very politely, looking up at the Doctor with wide eyed sincerity. Martha was surprised to notice the Doctor didn’t seem to mind; he even had one arm curved around the boy’s back, holding him securely. He was returning the boy's sincere gaze look for look. Martha almost expected them to be telepathically communicating, they were so intent on each other. She heard Logan chuckle behind her. She looked over to see the boy’s parents grinning at the scene.

Toby sat very straight in the Doctor’s lap, his hands clasped in front of him. He bit his lip, obviously preparing to say something. Martha expected him to say he wanted a pony for Christmas. But he apparently decided against it. He gnawed on his lip for a minute, then gave it up. Instead, he lay down comfortably against the front of the Doctor’s brown pinstriped jacket and the Doctor used a sneakered foot to set the chair to gently rocking. He joined back in the conversation, as the little boy’s thumb stole furtively up into his mouth and he fell asleep.

The Doctor didn’t seem to mind. He regaled Marta and Logan with his adventures trying to locate Martha in a 20 year metropolitan traffic jam and had the two parents quietly laughing with tears streaming out of the corners of their eyes. Martha rolled her eyes at him with chagrin. She hadn’t realized all he’d gone through to find her. He edited out the sadder parts and even Martha, who’d been there found herself laughing.

“You never got that coat from Janice Joplin!” she exclaimed softly.

“I did too.”

“Who’s Janice Joplin?” Marta asked as she banked the fire and placed a firescreen in front of it.

Martha waved the question away. “Famous singer back on Earth.”

“Ah, well, we’re a bit out of touch out here. Here, Doctor,” she reached for her son, “give him to me and I’ll put him to bed.”

The Doctor stood up, unfolding his lanky frame, still holding the sleeping boy. “I’ll carry him, Marta, just show me where.”

The woman nodded and led them up the stairs. Martha followed along. She looked sideways at the Doctor. Marta and Logan may look more mature than him, but she knew the Doctor was much older. He held the boy with practiced ease.

Marta led them up the roughhewn stairs and down a hallway. She opened a door and preceded them in, turning down the sheets on a small bed. The Doctor deftly circumvented the toys littering the floor and laid the boy in his bed, his long hands automatically slipped off the boys tiny boots, untangled the purple stuffed animal from the sheets, and tucked it into the crook of the child's arm. Toby turned on his side and curled around his toy, sucking on his thumb. The Doctor pushed back a lock of his baby fine hair and stepped back from the bed, allowing his mother to tuck the covers around the boy. Something in the Doctor’s stance made Martha’s chest ache.

“No use waking him up just to change him into his pajamas,” Marta said, ushering them out of the room. “Now, I’ve made up the guest room for you, along here.” She led them farther down the hall and pushed open a door at the end. Inside was a spacious guest room, a large wooden chair sat by the window, the wood rubbed down to a satiny finish from years of use, an armoire stood by the wall on the other side of the room, and a large plush bed sat in the middle, the fluffy quilt covering it screaming of comfort.

“I’ll leave you two to get settled in. Bathroom’s down the hall. Just yell if you need anything. I’ll see you in the morning.” The woman smiled at them and shut the door.

“So, one bed again.” Martha said. “This is getting to be a habit.” She refused to acknowledge the tickle of sensation in her stomach. The Doctor wasn’t interested, he’d made that clear, but it wasn’t her fault he was such an attractive man. Even if he wasn’t strictly speaking a man.

“I’ll take the chair,” he said with his normal, although occasionally irritating, gallantry. He sprawled down in the huge, heavy-armed chair and propped his feet up on the windowsill. Martha allowed herself to be annoyed at him, it was better than other possible responses, and went to investigate the bed. The quilt covered a blanket and sheets. She stripped the quilt aside and dragged it over to him.

“It’s a bit nippy out. You take the quilt.”

He grunted but didn’t answer. He was looking out the window, which was cracked open, letting in the cool night air. He was not quite melancholy, but calm. Calmer, in fact, than she’d ever seen him. He was usually so full of energy that he was bouncing off the walls, but now, it was like something in the air soothed him. She watched as he looked out the window at a dark starry night, no city lights, no traffic sounds, just the silent pinpoints of the stars and the dark bulk of the forest.

“Silent Night,” he said, as if he had read her thoughts. “Do you know,” he said thoughtfully, “they still sing that.”

Martha looked out the window, at the silent night that was indeed somehow holy. Her eyes shifted and she saw the reflection of the two of them in the glass. The tall gangling alien in his ultra urban pinstriped suit, and the Londoner in her tight fitting jacket and pineapple hairdo. Clutching a hand sewn quilt.

“Get some sleep, Doctor,” she said, tossing the quilt across him and tucking it in around him in the wide chair. She knew he wouldn’t close the window. He watched her, with a half grin on his face.

“Thank you, Martha Jones,” he said, half facetiously, since she’d tucked him in completely up to the neck.

“Think nothing of it, Doctor.” She ruffled his hair. He scowled like a ten year old boy, fought his arms free of the quilt, and fingercombed his hair back into its normal messy quiff.

She laughed and went to the bed, where she slipped off her shoes and jacket and slipped inside. She pulled the smooth sheets up around her shoulder and turned over to look at the Doctor. He’d hunkered back down in the chair, snuggling his arms back down under the thick quilt. He was still looking out the window. A bit melancholy, but it was a happy sort of melancholy, satisfied.

Satisfied herself, and with a little smile. She turned over and went to sleep.

 

The next morning, Martha woke to the sound of the door creaking open. Conditioned by life with the Doctor, she lay still and swiveled her eyes down past the foot of the bed to see what was stealing into their room.

A tiny little towhead peeked around the door, scanning for the Doctor, the baby brown hair turned golden by the slanting morning sun.

Martha grinned, toasty and comfortable in her bed. She rolled over to see the Doctor standing by the window, looking as neat and slick as if he’d just stepped out of the Tardis cleanser unit. For all she knew, he may have stolen back to the Tardis in the middle of the night.

“Good morning, Toby,” Martha said, sitting up. The little boy jumped guiltily and turned to her, tearing his eyes from the Doctor.

“G’morning. Ma says breakfast,” he said with a tiny lisp that she found endearing.

The Doctor turned from the window, smiling. “Thank you, Toby. We’ll be right down.”

The boy’s eyes widened at having his hero speak to him. “Uh huh,” he answered, and beat a hasty retreat, running into the door jamb on his way out.

Martha flopped back on the bed, muffling her laugher in the pillow, her shoulders shaking. The Doctor thumped her on the back. “That’s not polite,” he chided.

She rolled over and stared up at him, a huge grin on her face. “He’s in awe of you.”

“Well, wouldn’t you be if Santa Claus came to visit?”

Martha raked him up and down with a critical gaze. “You’re hardly a jolly old fat man.”

“Santa isn’t necessarily fat here.”

“What is he, then?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

“A shapeshifter.”

Her eyes snapped wide.

“It makes sense,” he continued. “Normally different traditions will winnow down to a common denominator over time, but there have been so many different traditions of Santa Claus and Father Christmas, over the years, not to mention the colonial variations, that instead of becoming one thing, he became everything. He can be a jolly old fat man in a red suit, a dignified older man in ermine robes, or a tall, skinny man in a dark suit, suitable for sneaking into locked houses at night and leaving presents.”

Martha’s grin just got wider and wider.

“Oi, you! Quit laughing at me and get up. Breakfast. I’m hungry.” He gave her knee a swat and she rolled out of bed, giggling.

 

After breakfast, Logan left to start the day’s chores. Life on a farm took no holidays and livestock still needed to be tended. After they helped Marta clear off the tables and load a wonderfully streamlined dishwasher (that didn’t use water, if the zapping sounds it was making were any indication), Martha asked what else they could do to help.

Marta looked around her spotlessly clean kitchen and doffed her apron. She took up a basket by the back door and handed Toby a smaller one. “You don’t have to do anything. You’re our guests. But I was going to go pick berries for a cobbler.”

“Berries!” the Doctor said, with one of those explosive exclamations that were so startling. “I love berries!”

“Yeah, knowing you, you’d eat half of them first, or explode them trying to shake them off the bush with your sonic screwdriver,” Martha said.

“I would not!” he said with a hurt, offended expression. He took another smaller basket out of the larger basket Marta held. “Lead on. We have berries to conquer!”

Marta grinned at his exuberance and led on.

 

“How many have you got, Doctor?” Martha asked, a couple of hours later, holding up her basket to show it was half full.

The Doctor’s face appeared over the top of the bush, a suspicious shiny green circle around his lips. Martha bit down on the smile forming on her own lips as he looked down at his basket with dismay.

“I’ll catch you up,” he replied, not quite guiltily, and she saw his hands start moving at superfast speed, plucking the berries off the bush so fast he sent it shaking and shedding leaves.

“Easy!” she said, almost laughing. She stood up on tiptoe and looked over the bush, watching his hands blur as the level of pale green gooseberries mounted in his basket. “That’s cheating, you know,” she pointed out.

“Whatever works,” he said. He didn't look up until several seconds later when he triumphantly held a heaping basket up for her approval. She looped her own basket over her arm and mockingly applauded.

Ignoring the sarcasm, he bowed.

Martha nodded back over her shoulder where Marta was plucking purple berries on the other side of the grove. “It’s a good thing she didn’t see that.”

The Doctor shrugged and popped another berry in his mouth, smiling smugly.

“How come there are still berries to be picked? Isn’t it a bit late in the year for that? Peacemas is still in December, isn’t it?”

“Yes, well, on Earth anyway. Peacemas is usually held during the winter solstice on whichever planet they’re on. Don’t know if they’re still running on local time or if they’ve converted to the interstellar holiday date yet. Anyway, if the stars last night are any indication, I’d say we’re pretty close to the solstice here.”

“So why are there still berries?” Martha asked.

“Hybrids.” He held up a plump, stripped berry and popped it in her mouth. “Custom designed. Most Earth produce has to be engineered for local conditions anyway, so they might as well give them a longer growing season while they’re at it. Best way to ensure colonies survive is to be sure they can grow enough food. What’s she looking at?”

Martha blinked at the change in topic as the Doctor vaulted over the bush and trotted over to where Marta was staring down at a depression in the ground, a gap in the line of berry bushes on her side of the circular grove.

“Anything wrong, Marta?” the Doctor asked, sauntering up with his hands in his pockets. Martha’s instincts went on red alert. She’d heard that innocent tone once too often. She set aside her berry basket and loped to catch up with the Doctor.

The Doctor and Marta were looking down at a bare, sandy patch in the middle of the line of berry bushes. By rights there should have been a berry bush right there. But instead there was a gap, like a pulled tooth.

The Doctor knelt down and drew his long fingers through the fine sand. It looked as if someone had dumped a load of playground sand in the spot, after ripping out the bush. But it wasn’t heaped up in the middle, instead it was indented. The Doctor ran his hand under the next bush and pulled his fingers out covered with the rich brown loamy soil of the area. The sand was all in one spot.

“Does this sort of think happen often?” He looked up at Marta, a slightly worried frown on his face.

“Sometimes, not frequently. Mind you, there are some natural herbivores around here that will eat a plant right down to the ground, especially when it starts to get cold, but I don’t know where the sand comes from.”

“Substrate,” the Doctor said.

“What?” Marta asked.

“Oh, nothing.” The Doctor cleaned off his dirty fingers and stood back up. He turned to the older woman with forced cheerfulness. “Do you think we’ve got enough berries now?” He held up his heaping basket with a grin. Martha hadn’t even been aware he’d brought it along.

“Oh, my!” Marta exclaimed with surprise. “Yes, that’s more than enough!” She poured some of his berries into her less full basket, before they could tumble out of his and be trampled, then stood up and pulled a wet-wipe out of her pocket and with motherly efficiency wiped the berry juice off around his mouth.

Martha wanted to jump around with glee. But the Doctor stood still, with his mouth tight closed and withstood it, rolling his eyes all the while.

“Toby!” Marta casually yelled as she tucked away the wipe and hefted up her basket. “Come on, we’re going home!”

There was no answer.

The Doctor frowned and looked around. Martha felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up a the look on his face. He was worried.

“Toby!” Marta yelled again, with the longsuffering impatience of most mothers. “Come along, we’ve got cobbler to bake!”

“Coming, Ma!” a little voice yelled through the trees. A second later, the little coverall clad body came running into the clearing, he was beaming. He ran up to his mother and held out full hands. “I found whitenuts!” he said excitedly, dropping a double handful into his mother’s hands. To Martha they looked like walnuts, only smaller and ivory white instead of brown. The boy reached into the top double breast pockets of his overalls and started emptying whitenuts into his mother’s basket. He’d stuffed his pockets as full as a squirrel’s cheeks.

“That’s wonderful. We can bake a whitenut pie. That’s your daddy’s favorite,” Marta praised her son.

“Mine too,” he said with satisfaction.

“Come on.” Marta stood up and took her son’s hand. “Let’s get moving. We’ve only got hours until the party, and we’ve got baking to do. Don’t forget your basket, Martha,” Marta said over her shoulder as she headed down the path that led back to the homestead.

Martha ran over to pick up her basket, then stopped in confusion when it wasn’t where she’d left it. She hunted around the bush where she’d been teasing the Doctor, then looked across the grove, thinking she must have carried it with her when she followed the Doctor. Nothing.

The Doctor sauntered up, swinging his basket. “Something wrong?”

Martha forced herself to stand still and survey the area. It was empty, just a wide circle of berry bushes with a leaf strewn clearing in the center. She could see clear across it, but there was no basket. She looked back down at the bush she was standing beside, she was sure it was the right bush, she could see the new skirt of leaves the Doctor had shaken loose with his hyper-picking.

“I thought I left it right here,” she said, pointing down at a spot beside the bush.

The Doctor looked down. There was nothing there but a ring of sand.

 

—

* * *

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	2. Chapter 2

Back at the house, the Doctor left Martha helping Marta in the kitchen and went out to track down Logan. He found the older man in a huge barn set among pastures a good half kilometer from the house. From the outside, it looked like a traditional “big red barn.” But inside, half the space was stalls, while the other side was gleaming electronics. 

Logan looked up from attaching sensor pads to one of the local “cows.” It was the last in a long line of similarly attached cows running down the electronic side of the barn. The cows here were leaner than the ones on Earth, almost deerlike in some ways. No doubt better able to handle browsing on alien grass. Logan patted the beast’s side and got up to greet the Doctor. 

“What can I help you with, Doctor?” he said, wiping his hands off on the ubiquitous barn towel. Some things never changed down through the centuries.

“Actually, I was hoping I could help you. What are you doing?” he said in a sudden switch of topic. His curiosity got the better of him as he looked down the line of sensor attached cows, all placidly chewing their cud. They weren’t giving milk, and the pads didn’t seem to be stimulating muscles. 

“Huh?” Logan looked over his shoulder at his livestock. “Oh,” he grinned. “Fetal monitoring. These are first generation hybrids. I’ve got a government grant to research and ensure the hybridization stays stable under alien conditions. These little ladies are our first free range mothers. We want to be sure the fetuses don’t have any deformities or mutations before the breed is distributed for widespread use.”

The Doctor nodded. It was fairly standard practice, although he was more used to seeing it from the laboratory angle, rather than on the farm. “Actually,” he said, pulling his gaze away from the strangely elegant cattle, and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I was wondering about these subsidences you’ve been having.”

“Yeah.” Logan scratched the back of his head. “That is puzzling.” He casually walked over and set a few controls on the electronic wall, looked down the line of placid cattle, checking something, then set one last control and beckoned for the Doctor to follow him out of the barn. “It only started a few months ago. Right as it started getting cold.” He led the Doctor over to the corner of the garage, where the white paddock fence met the red wall. He pointed down. There was another sandy patch at the juncture of wall and fence. “There used to be a crepe myrtle bush growing right here. One day it was here, the next day, gone. Nothing but sand.”

“Have you analyzed the sand?” the Doctor asked.

Logan nodded. “That’s the first thing we did. You don’t take anything for granted on a new planet. But, nothing. It’s just sand. No unusual bacteria, no viral forms, no insects or parasites, no radiation or odd energy readings. It’s just sand.”

“How far down does it go?” the Doctor asked, as he burrowed his hand down into the sand up past his wrist. There was no dirt underneath it. It wasn’t just poured on top of the ground.

“All the way,” Logan answered. “We thought at first that it was a sinkhole, or some sort of quicksand, it even took out half the compost heap behind the house, but...” He stepped into the middle of the sand, on the slight depression. The sand held. He stomped to prove his point. “No movement. It’s solid. Or as solid as sand gets, anyway.” He moved off the patch, uneasy, not wanting to test his luck.

“Have there been any strange sightings recently?” the Doctor asked. “Any strange craft in orbit?”

“What, like alien invaders come to steal our bushes?” Logan grinned. He shook his head. “No, traffic control hasn’t logged anything unusual. And there aren’t any other inhabited planets in this system.”

The Doctor waved a hand down at the sand. “Are they always like this? Round patches?”

Logan shook his head. “Usually, but we did have some really weird shapes show up in the grain fields.”

“Crop circles?” the Doctor asked, eyebrows rising.

“Not circles exactly,” Logan said, not getting the reference. “More sort of like trails, as if someone had just meandered through with a mower. None of them were very long. We didn’t lose enough grain to worry about, but I did take pictures, they’re back at the house.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back toward the homestead. “We tested the grain near the bald spots too, but we didn’t find anything unusual. Why are you so interested?”

“Oh, you could say I’m a wandering problem solver. I can’t resist a good mystery.”

\--------–

The rest of the family returned just before noon. Marta, Logan, and Toby piled out of the house and helped unload the wide, round, flatbed trucks that looked to Martha rather like huge m&m shaped hovercraft. The white ceramic coating even looked like a candy shell, she thought, with half the top dome chopped off to form the bed of the truck and the remaining curved shell serving as windscreen and weather shield for the drivers. 

Martha and the Doctor were introduced around to Logan’s parents-in-law and three twenty-something male cousins, and one fiance of a cousin who had decided to come out early and help with preparations for the party.

Groceries were carried into the main house, and large, mysteriously wrapped parcels were spirited away to their hiding places before their distribution later that night. The Doctor smiled as he watched the cousin and his fiance giggling as they hustled two large sacks of parcels off to the bunkhouse the cousins shared. 

The Doctor pulled Martha off to the sidelines as the family ran around putting up supplies talking about what and who they’d seen in town. 

“Come on, there’s something I want to check.” He took her elbow and led her out the back door and down the path to the berry patch just inside the forest.

“What’s this all about?” she asked as he started quartering the area, scanning the ground with his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor waved a negligent hand at the sandy patch where her berry basket had disappeared, not looking up from his work. “Those things have been appearing lately, random sandy patches where there used to be vegetation.”

“And that means something?” she asked.

“It could do. I’ve seen something like it before. But I’m not getting the kind of energy readings I’d expect.” He knocked on his sonic screwdriver, shaking it as if it was deliberately being obtuse. He shook his head and switched the device off. He ran his hand through his hair. “In your talks with Marta, has she mentioned any people going missing lately?”

Martha’s eyebrows went up. “No. She’s mostly been excited about the party and reminiscent of other Peacemasses. I got the impression this planet isn’t very inhabited yet, so she’s looking forward to the company.” 

“No unease? No avoiding certain topics?” he coaxed.

Martha shook her head. “No, she seems pretty calm and happy. Why, are you expecting some...”

“ _TOBY!_ " Marta’s visceral scream split the air, the mother’s anguish audible even from here. The Doctor and Martha looked at each other and ran. They found Marta behind the house, frantically digging at a patch of sand. But this patch of sand wasn’t round; it was the distinct shape of a fallen little boy. 

Her cousins milled around in confusion, not understanding what had happened. Vince, the eldest, tried to put his arm around her and calm her down, but she threw him off. 

The Doctor ran and slid down beside her on his knees. He quickly scanned the sand with his sonic screwdriver, and his face went black at whatever readings he found. He pocketed it and grabbed Marta by the shoulders.

“Marta. Marta! Look at me!” he ordered. The frantic woman tried to keep digging, tears streaming down her face, a high pitched keening coming from her throat.

“MARTA!” The whipcrack of his voice penetrated her panic and she stared at him. He took her sand-scoured hands and held them tightly, keeping her still. “Tell me what happened.”

“He’s gone!” she wailed, starting to rock back and forth on her knees. 

He tightened his hands on hers and stopped the motion, his eyes caught hers, locking with them. His big brown eyes that looked so gentle but could spear a person down to the soul. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Marta stilled and gulped. Martha saw Logan arrive and drape his arm around his wife’s shoulder, terrified by her shout, and by the strange mental hold this stranger seemed to have on her. Martha shook her head at him, giving him a tiny, encouraging smile. She nodded down to where Marta was gathering her composure under the influence of the Doctor’s eyes. 

“I sent Toby to Mum’s with some fresh garlands and a wreath to decorate for the party tonight,” Marta said, almost calm. “The garlands were long, draped all around him, and I saw him trip just outside the door. I went to help him and realized he couldn’t get up. He was trying to, I could see him pushing, but it was like he was stuck to the ground. Then,” she gulped and started breathing roughly, tears and hysteria pushing at the back of her throat, “he started fizzling,” she said on a rising tone of panic. “He just went all staticy, like bad reception on a monitor screen. I could see his face. He was looking at me. He was terrified.” She started rocking again. “Then he just disappeared.”

\---------–

Marta broke down weeping and collapsed into her husband’s arms. The Doctor reached forward and wrapped his long hand around her forehead, pressing her temples with forefinger and thumb. She gave an aspirating sigh and slumped bonelessly.

“What did you do?” Logan yelled, clutching his wife’s chubby form.

“Nothing,” the Doctor said. “I just sent her to sleep. We need to put her to bed. She’ll sleep for half an hour and wake up calmer, more able to handle the situation.” The Doctor helped Logan to his feet as the other man cradled his wife in his arms.

“What situation?” Logan demanded. “Where’s Toby?”

An older woman and an old man came running around the edge of the house. They saw their daughter unconscious in Logan’s arms and let out a cry. The Doctor sent Martha a beseeching look. 

“Leila, Vince,” she said, looking at the affianced couple, “Go turn down the sheets on Marta’s bed, Vince, clear all those packages off the stairs. Mr. and Mrs. Miller, there’s been a problem. Toby’s missing, Marta has passed out, and we need you to look after her while the Doctor, Logan, and I figure out what has happened.”

Logan gave Martha a blank stare for this bald faced lie but didn’t contradict her. He stalked into the house and carried his wife up the stairs, his cousins scuttling around him. Martha followed to check on Marta’s physical condition, and sent one last look back over her shoulder. The Doctor was sonicing the ground again, spiraling out from the sand patch in an ever widening circle.

“Do you have caves under here?” the Doctor asked immediately Logan and Martha returned, not giving Logan the chance to vent the frustrations that showed on his face.

“Caves?” Logan said. “Damn the caves! What happened to my son!?” he roared.

“I think I know where Toby is, Logan, but I have to know, do you have caves under your property.” Logan stared at him in blank outrage. “ _Caves_ , man! Surely you had the land surveyed before you staked claim here?” the Doctor roared back in equal frustration. 

The familiarity of male irritation in the face of emotional upset seemed to calm Logan and snap him out of his terrified frozen mindblock. “Caves, yes. I’ve got the original survey maps in my office. There are a few caves under here, that’s why we wondered about subsidence.” He jerked his chin toward the sand pit. “But there were no minerals found and the area is structurally stable so the claim was granted.”

“Good!” The Doctor said with satisfaction, snapping the sonic screwdriver off and stuffing it into his pocket. “We need to find a way in.”

“There’s a cave entrance not far back in the woods,” Vince said, standing in the doorway. The twenty year old, dark haired man bore a strong resemblance to Toby, looking like what the child would look like as an adult, brown hair, blue eyes, with a young rangy build. “It’s just a cave, though, not a tunnel system, it’s got a crack in the back wall, but it doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“Oh, I’m betting it does now,” the Doctor said. “Come on, Logan. Show me these maps.”

\--------–

It was Vince who led them to the cave in the woods. The survey maps hadn’t shown much, simply a few unconnected caves dotted throughout the area. No subterranean tunnel networks or complex cave systems.

“There it is,” Vince said, waving to the outcropping of rock with the jagged cleft in the face. The outcropping was overgrown with ferns and bushes and could easily have been overlooked in the general forest greenery. Just another pile of rocks. But the Doctor approached the cavemouth with sonic screwdriver at the ready, as if he expected to find a firebreathing dragon inside. 

He eased one foot into the fissure of the stone, then the other. Martha could see the blue light of the screwdriver waving back and forth, the light gleaming out of the dark slit. 

“See anything?” she called when there was no response forthcoming. 

“No. Come on in,” the Doctor’s muffled voice called back. 

Martha squeezed her way into the stone, feeling dust trickling down the back of her neck as she brushed against the cleft walls. She emerged into an irregularly shaped earthen room, Vince and Logan followed behind. The room was about 20 feet across, sloping downward at the back, below the ground level outside, but hardly subterranean.

“Huh!” she huffed, hands on her hips as she surveyed the broken outline of the boulders that made up the domed ceiling of the room. The Doctor was holding the sonic screwdriver up as a torch, its blue light the only illumination. “I’d hardly call it a cave. It’s not much more than a hollow shaped by the way the boulders are piled,” she said, waving toward the rough stones and the way the plant roots showed through some of the cracks.

“I told you it wasn’t much,” Vince protested.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” the Doctor said in a ruminative voice. He was examining the four foot tall slit in the back wall. That side of the room was lower than the rest, a couple of feet below ground level outside, but there was an impression of depth to the darkness inside the slit, suggesting it led back farther into the hill.

The Doctor pressed his face up to the crack, eyeballing what he could see inside. He stuck his arm in as far as it would go, but even with his pinstriped sleeve in up to the shoulder he couldn’t seem to touch the back. 

“Yes, I think this might be just what we need. Stand back.” He adjusted the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the crack, buzzing it. The dirt around the hole started shaking loose, cascading down in rivulets, expanding the hole with every pass of the screwdriver.

Once the hole was big enough the Doctor stuck his head and shoulders inside. “Ah, ha! Just what I thought! Come on, Martha.” The Doctor pushed his way into the expanded crack, scratching his chest on the rock bordering the gash. Martha turned sideways and followed him. 

Inside was the beginning of a tunnel. It was only slightly taller than Martha, not quite as wide as her outstretched arms, and sloped downward, back into the hill. The Doctor had already gone ahead, she could see the blue light of the sonic screwdriver gleaming off of the walls. 

Martha started to follow, but the level floor near the entry abruptly sloped downward, she slipped in the loose dust and fell. She slid down the slope, turning and tumbling, using her arms to try to avoid the walls. A narrow hole came into view, pinching the tunnel ahead of her, a bottleneck only a few feet across. Unable to stop her descent, Martha squealed and curled herself into a ball. She bumped and tumbled down the slope, through the bottleneck, and into the back of the Doctor’s knees as he stood in the larger chamber beyond.

He let out a “Whoa!”, windmilled his arms ,and fell backward over her. 

Martha uncoiled her arms from around her head. She looked up. The Doctor was lying beside her, propped up on his elbows, looking at her as if he meant to be lying there with his legs propped up on her back.

“Are you okay?” Martha asked.

The Doctor humphed. He scrambled around and stood. He gave her a hand up. Then bent and picked up the sonic screwdriver which had gone flying out of his hand when she bowled into him. Fortunately, it was still glowing, softly illuminating the cave they were in. It was another dome shaped cave, slightly larger than the one above. There seemed to be several other tunnels leading off of it.

They heard voices echoing from beyond the bottleneck. Martha leaned down and yelled up the tunnel. “Be careful! Watch your step, it’s steep!”

Before she finished the words, they heard a yowl, and a long slithering sound, and Vince came sliding feet first into the cave, as if he’d just been birthed. A billow of dust rose up around him. He lay there, surprised, then coughed and waved the cloud of dust away. “Thanks for the warning,” he said wryly. 

There was a mighty thud and an “Ouch!” And then Logan came crawling into the cave on all fours. He pushed a handlight across the floor in front of him. He slid it over in the loose dust to Vince. “Here, you dropped this.”

Logan stood up and took his own handlight from his belt. He played it around the room, the white beam picking out the mica and the rocky texture of the walls, and spearing down the different tunnels. “None of this showed up on the survey maps,” he said with calm surprise. 

“No,” the Doctor said. “I expect they’ve been made since then.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his powerful little pen torch, which he handed to Martha. 

“Thanks.” She flicked it on, relieved to have a light of her own, and played it around. There were five tunnels leading off of the cave, counting the one they had fallen down. 

“So, what do we do?” Vince asked. “Split up?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “Unless I miss my guess, the house is this way.” He pointed with the sonic screwdriver toward the rightmost tunnel. “Best we all stay together for now. Until we know what we’re dealing with.”

Martha followed him at a crouch. “But you already have an idea what we’re dealing with, don’t you, Doctor?” she whispered as they all four threaded their way down the five foot tall tunnel. 

The Doctor gave her one of those quick dire looks back over his shoulder, then turned forward again. “That’s why we should all stick together.”

They seemed to walk forever. Martha knew it wasn’t; it was probably only minutes, but crouching under the low tunnel ceiling was even starting to make her shoulders hurt. It had to be worse for the Doctor and the men. 

“TOBY!” Logan yelled behind her. She virtually jumped out of her skin. The man drew breath to call for his son again, but the Doctor wheeled and shushed him savagely. 

“Keep quiet!” The blue light of the sonic screwdriver cast his bony face in satanical relief. “We don’t want to attract the attention of what built these tunnels.”

“What did build these tunnels?” Vince asked.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. Martha doubted that. “But our best bet is to find Toby without drawing attention to ourselves.”

“I want my son, Doctor,” Logan said. 

“So do I. The house is only a little farther. With luck they’ll still be there. Trust me, Logan. We’ll get Toby back. I promise.” The Doctor gave him a long look then turned and continued to lead the way. 

There were side tunnels, some large and some small, and one other intersection cave, but the Doctor kept them going in the right direction. They came to a junction in the tunnel, one tunnel leading off to the right, the other to the left. 

“Logan, Vince, you take the left tunnel. Martha and I will take the right. We’re close to the house now. Keep you eyes open. If you see any movement... Wait. Here, Vince, give me your handlight.” The Doctor reached out for the device and quickly popped it open when Vince handed it over. He pulled loose some wires, cross circuited something and soniced it down. He popped it closed and handed it back. “Keep it turned on. If you get stuck, hit the button to turn it off, throw it, and run. We’ll meet back here in ten minutes.” He waved them off into the other tunnel, then took Martha’s pen light and gave it the same treatment. 

“What’s this in aid of, Doctor?” she asked. 

He handed the light back. “Just a precaution.” He ducked into the righthand tunnel without elaborating. 

Martha gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes. He could be such an exasperating _alien_!

The tunnel they’d chosen almost immediately started curving to the right, away from the other. “Are you sure we’re still heading toward the house?” Martha asked after several minutes. 

“Should be. We’ve been heading steadily west. The house should be right above us. Hsst!” He held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

A soft whimpering echoed down the tunnel. The Doctor beckoned her silently and crept forward. Around the next curve of the tunnel the area opened out into a small cave. Very small, only six feet tall and twice as wide. The Doctor motioned her back, and squatted down. 

Inside the cave the walls glowed with a green fungus. The soft green light showed Toby, standing by the lefthand wall. The whimpering noises were coming from him. He was standing, terrified, shivering in his little overalls. Staring at a monster.

The monster was huge, ten feet long and four feet tall, lying on its belly, and looked like a giant pillbug. Curved, segmented armor plates stretched back over a long humped form. Antennae quivered in the little boy’s direction, the creature’s pug face only an armlength from the child. It was chewing on the end of a long garland, its motions as slow and deliberate as a cow chewing its cud.

“Toby,” the Doctor whispered. 

The little boy’s eyes moved, straining sideways toward the Doctor. But otherwise he stood rooted to the spot.

“He’s too scared, Doctor,” Martha said. “He can’t move.”

“No, he’s a brave little boy. Aren’t you, Toby?” The Doctor inched closer, taking a good look at the creature. He held out his hand to the child. “When I give the word, you come to me, Toby, yeah? You run right to me.” He turned and talked to Martha over his shoulder, never taking his reassuring gaze from the boy’s terrified eyes. “Martha, turn off your light and throw it.”

“What?” she started to argue.

“Just do it!”

She clicked off the penlight and tossed it at the creature. It bounced harmlessly off the chitinous plates. And exploded.

“Now!” the Doctor yelled.

Tony dashed to him and jumped straight into his arms. The Doctor scooped him up, whirled, and ran. “Run!” 

Martha was right behind him. The weird warbling yell of the creature, deafening behind her, urged her on. 

Back through the intersection, back through the tunnels, out into the second intersection cave. “Which way?” Martha yelled. She’d overtaken him in the junction and was now in the lead. 

“Left! Keep going left!” the Doctor yelled.

Left, and left again. They didn’t wait for Logan and Vince to catch them up; it was more important to get Toby to safety. The little boy clung to the Doctor like a limpet. The Doctor was forced to run crouched over in the short tunnels but that didn’t slow him down.

Martha took a left again and emerged into the final intersection tunnel. But there was no way out. No kneehigh tunnel leading to the surface. 

And all the walls were made of black glass. 

The Doctor skidded to a halt and looked around. “Oh, this is not good.” 

—————

“We’re lost!” Martha wailed. 

“Did you keep turning left?” the Doctor demanded.

“I kept turning left!” she said with an exasperated wave of her hands. She stalked back toward the other side of the cave but stopped, there were three tunnels on that side of the cave. She wasn’t sure which one they’d come through. “Great! Now which way do we go?”

“We came in through the righthand tunnel,” the Doctor said, still carrying the boy. 

“How do you know that?” Martha demanded.

He pointed with the sonic screwdriver. “Tracks.”

Martha rolled her eyes as the blue light illuminated their tracks emerging from the tunnel. “Right, then we go back right and turn right!” She ignored the redundancy of that statement and stalked off. The waning howl of the monster echoed down the tunnel. She stopped. She backed up a step. “What was that thing, anyway?” she said nervously, turning back to the Doctor.

“A Tractator. I’ve come across them before, but never one as big as that. You all right, Toby?” he asked, turning his face down to the little head that was burrowed into his throat, tiny arms tight around his neck. The boy nodded, but trembled. The Doctor rubbed his back. “You were very brave. You just hang onto me, all right?”

The little head nodded and hung on tighter. 

“Right,” the Doctor said, turning back to Martha. “We’ve got to get out of here. If they’ve got glass walls like this, it means trouble. We’ve got to get out of here, find Logan and Vince and warn the authorities.”

Martha shrugged. “I’m all for it, but _how_ do we get out of here?”

The Doctor thought about it hard for a moment, then looked up with decision. “We go back right and turn right.” Ignoring her glare, he hitched Toby up and ducked back into the tunnel. 

 

They picked their way carefully back through the tunnels, checking each left hand turn for signs of their incoming footprints. They only had the sonic screwdriver as a light now, its buzz grating on Martha’s teeth and nerves as she was sure the monster would hear it and would come looking.

She considered asking the Doctor to turn the sound off, until she realized she’d never seen the screwdriver lit up without the sound on, even if he wasn’t “sonicing” anything. Perhaps the sound was necessary. Maybe there was a gyroscope inside that not only created and modulated the sounds, but also generated the power for the light.

Thinking about the sonic screwdriver was better than thinking about that monster. But before she could ask the Doctor how it worked, he let out a muffled “Ah, ha!” and showed her the footprints leading off into the lefthand tunnel. There were four sets of footprints, all leading farther into the tunnels. But none leading out. 

“Logan and Vince haven’t preceded us then,” Martha said.

“Doesn’t look like,” the Doctor said, shifting Toby to his other arm and bending his head to enter the new tunnel. “We’ll get Toby back to his mother first. Then, if they haven’t shown up, we’ll come back and look for them.”

“Okay,” Martha said, “You all right, Toby?”

“Yuh huh,” the little boy said, his face muffled in the Doctor’s collar.

Retracing their steps took less time than Martha expected. They made it back to the main junction cave, with the reassuring sight of the hole to the outside, without any problems, and without running into Vince or Logan. 

“Right, Martha, you go first, then Toby, then me,” the Doctor instructed hastily as he set Toby down. 

Martha ducked around him and trotted eagerly for the tunnel. Then stopped. She squeaked.

The Doctor looked up from Toby. “Martha?”

“I’m stuck!” She strained, trying to move her legs but her feet were glued to the ground. A wave of yellowish static washed up from the ground, over her feet and up, encompassing her whole body.

“Martha!” The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and ran forward. She caught at his hand as her feet sank away into the floor. The yellowish static flowed across to engulf him as well. 

“Saint!” Toby ran over and grabbed the Doctor’s sleeve, pulling with all his sturdy little might. 

“Toby, no!” the Doctor yelled. But the yellow static encompassed the boy as well. The Doctor scooped the child close with one arm as they all began phasing out, an inexorable force pulling them down through solid rock.

Their vision returned from its haze of yellow and black to find themselves floating slowly downward from a ceiling toward the armored grublike form of the Tractator below, its antennae twitching in time to the staticy field that encompassed them.

“Hold on!” the Doctor yelled, and tripped the sonic screwdriver. 

Feedback squealed out. The Tractator grunted like a startled pig and the energy field blinked out. The Tractator curled its antennae down in painful response to the sound. They all fell, Martha screamed, Toby yelled, the Doctor “Whoa!"ed, and they all fell right on top of the resilient chitinous armor of the creature and bounced off. 

The Tractator jumped and squealed and scuttled off as fast as its four stubby legs could take it. By the time Martha rolled over and pushed herself to a sitting position all she saw was the Tractator’s bulbous armored rear end wiggling away frantically down the corridor.

“Everyone all right?” the Doctor asked as he untangled his lanky self from his landing curl and stood up, brushing fastidiously at his pinstriped suit. He looked around. “Toby?”

“Okay,” the boy said, but his lower lip was trembling. He watched the monster crawl away into the caves and shivered. He pushed himself up and ran straight over to the Doctor. “Scared!” he declared, holding his arms up. The Doctor knelt and wrapped the little boy in his long arms. 

“It’s okay, buddy,” he said into the child’s silky hair. He rubbed the little boy’s back then set the child away and grinned at him. “He didn't like that sound, did he?” He held up the sonic screwdriver and gave a shrill blast. “Did you see the way his antennae curled up?” The Doctor made fake antennae with his long fingers and curled them down tight with a comical grimace of pain on his face. The little boy laughed. 

“That’s the man," the Doctor said. “You’re braver than any old bug, aren’t you?” The Doctor stood up and gripped the young boy’s hand. Toby stood up straighter and nodded decisively. 

Martha smiled to herself. 

“So.” The Doctor started patting himself down with his free hand. He frowned at the sonic screwdriver in it. “Here,” he said, handing Toby the device, its light providing the only illumination in this black cave, “you hold this.” The boy went wide eyed with the privilege and held the sonic screwdriver up with pride. “Don’t push any buttons,” the Doctor warned as he went back to patting down his pockets. “Ah!” He dug into an inside pocket and pulled out a long wooden twig, almost as long as his hand, perfectly straight, and about 1/4 inch thick. “Everlasting match!” he said triumphantly. He reached over to strike it on the rock wall. The tip slid frictionlessly down the glass surface. 

“Oh,” the Doctor looked up and round, only then realizing they were in another black glass cave. “Ooookay,” he drawled slowly. He looked around for somewhere else to strike the match. Sole of the shoe, too rubbery, clothes, too smooth, Martha’s hairband, same problem, Toby’s clothes, no help there. Finally with a sigh, he knelt down and changed a setting on the sonic screwdriver. “Point that right there, Toby,” he said, pointing to the end of the long match. The boy leaned the screwdriver forward, pointing it with careful intensity. The sound changed pitch, and the match ignited. “Good job!” The Doctor grinned at the boy, then stood up and handed the mini-torch to Martha. “There you go.”

Martha took the fragile bit of wood dubiously, holding it up. “How long’s _this_ gonna last?”

“Forever,” he said, taking his sonic screwdriver back from Tony and holding it up high so they could see their prison better. “It’s an everlasting match. It’s made out of a special wood that grows when heated. If you set it on fire, it will burn forever. Or at least as long as there’s oxygen.”

“Great.”

\--------—

The Doctor examined the walls with the sonic screwdriver. Unlike the previous glass walled cave, this one was completely smooth. Only the flickering shadows gave it the appearance of unevenness.

“Hm.” He knelt down and ran his fingers over a pile of black glass chipping that lined the base of the walls. “Dusty,” he observed. “Well, that’s a relief anyway.” 

“How long does it take things to become dusty underground?” Martha asked doubtfully, holding the match down to get a clear view of the chippings.

“Good point,” the Doctor said. “Keep your ears open.”

They exited the cave through the only one of the three tunnels that didn’t show signs of the Tractator’s passage. Toby held the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor went before, the sonic screwdriver held high. Its cool blue light cast a ghostly radiance over the air. Martha came behind, the everlasting match held high, its flickering yellow light casting odd glimmering shadows on the walls, as if something moved behind the glass.

“Doctor?” she said uneasily.

“It’s an optical illusion. Just ignore it,” he said too quickly. Toby was nervously sucking his thumb.

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Martha asked. “There’s not even a draft to follow.”

“Good thing. Last time I followed the breeze it just led to trouble,” he said. “We’re moving up.”

Martha looked down at the level floor. “How can you tell?”

He lifted the sonic screwdriver, its tip pointed at the ceiling and raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her. 

“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “Is there anything that thing can’t do?”

“Not much. The mass above us is less dense in this direction, besides, there’s no other way to go until we find another tunnel.” This section of the tunnel had been completely smooth and unbroken so far.

“What if we don’t?” she asked.

“Martha, have a _little_ faith,” he said, exasperated, but smiling encouragingly. 

It seemed like they walked for hours. But there was no way to tell. The sonic screwdriver remained steady, and the everlasting match never burned down. Only the weariness of their feet and Tony’s occasional petulant grumble marked the passage of time.

“We’ll rest here for a bit,” the Doctor said, stopping when Toby started to fret in earnest.

“I can carry him if you like,” Martha offered, wanting to get out of this endless glimmering gloom.

“No, we’re all tired. Best to conserve our energy.” He folded his long lanky body down, sitting cross-legged in the center of the tunnel. Toby crawled into his lap and curled into a ball.

Martha hunkered down with a bit less grace and sighed in relief. She set the everlasting match aside on a dust free patch of black glass floor. She watched it for a minute to be sure it would continue to burn, then pulled her jacket closer around her and tucked her hands inside.

“It’s a good thing we’re underground, at least it’s not really cold,” she said.

“No, just cool. Your ancestors knew what they were doing living in caves.”

She grinned somewhat sourly, not knowing whether to be complimented or insulted. “Still,” she said. “It would be nice if we had something to eat.”

“Oh.” The Doctor started patting down his pockets, avoiding the sleeping Toby. He pulled out an apple from inside his jacket and flipped it at her. “There you go.”

She caught it in surprise. She looked from the plump green apple to the flat, snug fit of his suit. She didn’t ask. She bit into the apple. It was crisp and sweet and juice dribbled down her chin. She wiped it up with her finger. “Thanks,” she said, mouth full.

“Pleasure.” He grinned back.

“So what are we going to do?” She sat forward, cradling the apple in her hands. 

“Find a way out,” he said.

“Well, obviously. But how? It’s not like we can phase through rock by ourselves.”

“No. But there’s air down here, it has to be coming from somewhere. Even Tractators have to breathe. What I don’t get is where are the rest?” He looked around at the glass walls suspiciously.

“What do you mean?” Martha asked.

“We’ve seen one admittedly over-large Tractator. So where are the rest? They don’t resemble bugs for no reason, if there’s one there’s usually a whole colony, so where are they?”

“Perhaps there _is_ only one,” Martha said, perking up at that thought.

“Hmm. Possibly.” 

 

“Come on,” the Doctor said a while later. He got to his feet, still holding the sleeping Toby. The little boy wrapped his arms limply around the Doctor’s neck, rested his head on his chest, and went back to sleep. The Doctor wrapped both arms under him and set off down the tunnel. Martha tossed aside her apple core, picked up the match, and followed. 

The corridor curved ahead of them in a long sweep. The reflection from the match and sonic screwdriver illuminated farther than they would normally as the smooth glass wall bounced and reflected the light down the tunnel ahead of them. 

Slowly the curve revealed itself, and its end. 

“What is that thing?” Martha asked, holding the match higher. 

The tunnel ended abruptly, the sheer rock wall plugged with a machine, a large circular device, with blades that extended out to meet the walls. Where the blades met the walls, the glass had fused around them. Giving the glass a runny, lumpy appearance.

“Take him.” The Doctor handed a sleepy Toby over to Martha. She took him carefully, trying to keep the match out of the way. Toby woke up with a querulous sound, but the Doctor laid a finger on his lips. “Shhh.” He said softly, warning the boy. Toby’s eyes widened, but he pressed his lips together and nodded. He craned his neck to see past the Doctor and see what the fuss was about. 

The Doctor approached the device carefully. The back of the machine was a solid plate, only the blades giving it shape. The front of the machine was aimed away from them, toward the wall. The Doctor eased forward, there was no way to reach the front of the machine, the blades formed a solid cage, attached to the machine at one end and fused into the walls at the other. The Doctor shone the sonic screwdriver into the gap between two of the blades, playing it over whatever was in front. 

“Ah.”

It was not a happy sound. It sounded like the confirmation of unwelcome news. 

“What is it?”

“The driver...”

There was a sudden rattling clink as the glass chips along the edges of the floor started to vibrate and tumble. The floor beneath them rumbled. There was a loud noise like breaking glass, or like someone chewing the biggest ice cube ever. 

The wall of the tunnel cracked, and exploded outward. 

“Martha!” The Doctor jumped forward and grabbed Martha and Tony, dragging them back to shelter by the machine. He shielded them with his body as debris tumbled around them the giant Tractator surged into the tunnel.

The insect didn’t even stop, but barreled down the tunnel in the opposite direction, its huge armor plates weaving from side to side as it scuttled heavily away. Martha kept expecting to see dozens of legs churning away under it, like an isopod, but even with only four legs it moved faster than anything that big should. 

Toby whimpered and clutched tighter to Martha. 

“I don’t think it saw us,” the Doctor said.

“How could it not?!” Martha said with near panic. It was one thing to see that creature from above, where it seemed smaller, but to see two tons of rampaging insect explode out of the wall was enough to frighten anyone. 

“It’s concentrating on something else,” he said. “Your apple core, unless I’m much mistaken.” 

“You’re telling me that that thing smelled my apple through solid rock?” Martha said in disbelief.

“Of course. How else can it know what’s good to eat on the surface?” He herded Martha and Toby ahead of him toward the tunnel the creature had left behind. “This solves our problem of how to get out, anyway.”

The tunnel was six feet tall, taller than the creature, which Martha vividly remembered seeing rearing up as it dug, before it fell through into the tunnel. She shivered. The tunnel was tall enough for her to hurry along, running while still holding Toby, the Doctor had to duck his head. But then, Martha was certain he could crawl on his belly, and still manage to move faster than a human. 

“The match has gone out,” she observed, blankly, still a bit shocked, as she noticed the blackened stub she still clutched in one hand, under Toby’s bum. It was probably a good thing, she wouldn’t have wanted to burn him.

“The gust of wind knocked it out. No worries, I’ll relight it as soon as we find a clear intersection.” He chivvied them along, not that Martha required motivation to move as far away from that creature as possible. 

Eventually, to Martha’s surprise, they did come out into an intersection. A rough rock one at that. No glass walls here. 

“That’s better,” the Doctor said with satisfaction, observing the cave. “Here, let me.” He took the match and relit it with a blast of the sonic screwdriver. He took Toby from her and set him on his feet. The boy was extremely wide awake now. “Think you can keep up with us, champ?”

The boy nodded, wide eyed, biting his lip but determined. 

“Good man!” The Doctor offered his hand and the boy took it gratefully. 

“Through here, I think.” The Doctor did a quick scan with the sonic screwdriver and led them out through one of the five tunnels intersecting the cave. Martha breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the cool breeze that wafted down the tunnel, and the gentle, but reassuring upward incline of the ground under her feet. 

Tunnels were more plentiful here, dark archways branching off showing a large network and many possible escape routes. The light began to grow brighter. Up ahead a tall archway shed light into the tunnel. The light slowly swamped the sonic screwdriver’s blue glow and Martha perked up. “Doctor?”

He held out an arm and stopped her. The light was orange. He shoved Toby back toward her. “Stay here.”

Easing his way forward, he approached the archway. Martha pressed herself back against the tunnel wall, anything that unnerved the Doctor was not something she wanted to mess with. She held Toby’s small hand tightly. The little boy looked up at her with frightened eyes. She smiled at him reassuringly. His gaze went back to the Doctor. His hero slipped around the corner and disappeared. 

Martha held her breath. 

Silence.

Stillness.

The clink of a pebble on stone. 

“It’s all right,” the Doctor’s voice drifted back to them. “You can come in.”

Martha and Toby crept forward carefully, and eased around the corner into the archway. Then stopped in surprise.

They were in a huge, vaulted, cathedral room. Huge stanchions curved up around the walls, holding up a dome shaped roof over a massive mosaic inlaid floor. The pattern on the floor was of stars and planets. But it was something else on the floor the Doctor was looking at.

“That explains it,” he said, standing up from a large, grey-black lump lying to one side of the floor. 

“What does?” Martha said, almost not wanting to know. 

The Doctor carefully turned over the lump. And she realized it was a Tractator, smaller and more refined looking than the one she’d already seen. It was dead. Almost mummified. The side of its head had been caved in by the large boulder that lay on the floor beside it. 

“This,” the Doctor said, waving down at the pitiful corpse, “used to be the Gravis.”

—

* * *

_For more stories by this author click[here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/betawho/works)._  
 _Please take a moment to leave a comment in the box below._


	3. Chapter 3

“What’s a Gravis?” Martha asked.

“I guess you could say he’s the mind of the Tractators. The guiding force. With him, the Tractators are a highly technological race. The last time I met them they were turning the planet they were on into a gravity engine.” He saw her look of incomprehension. “Aside from their ability to manipulate gravity directly, they’re also magnificent gravity engineers. Those glass tunnels? They form a ring, smooth and mathematically precise. It allows them to control the planet’s gravity, actually use it to drive the planet.”

“They can move a planet?” Martha asked, her eyes going wide. Toby looked up at them, eyes going back and forth between then, not understanding the conversation. 

“Yes. They drive it from system to system, seeding worlds as they go. Breeding and feeding and stripping the planet of all its resources before starting the cycle all over again.”

“But,” Martha waved back at the tunnels, “that thing, you can’t tell me _that_ is an intelligent gravity engineer!”

“No, without the Gravis, the Tractators are just harmless burrowing earth creatures. That’s what didn’t make sense. The last time I saw the Tractators they were at the height of their power. The Tractator here must be the atavistic form, what they revert to without a Gravis to lead them.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s almost a shame really, all that culture, all that knowledge, the artistry to build all this,” he waved his hand at the beautiful cavern, “reduced to the level of a brute.”

“Sounds like it’s probably the best option. Certainly for the human colonists here,” Martha said. 

“Maybe,” the Doctor said. He scuffed his trainer on the dust covered mosaic floor. “Sometimes I just wish all the creatures in this universe could get along together.”

Martha smiled at his woebegone look. She laid a hand on his arm. “We don’t seem to be doing so bad,” she said, smiling, human to Time Lord.

He looked up at her, his face downturned, peering through his wild shock of hair. He smiled a little smile. “Yeah.” He shook off his maudlin thoughts and straightened up. “Right! Lets leave this dying civilization to its decline and get back up to the growing one. We’ve got a party to go to.” He clapped his hands and turned in a circle, surveying the various tunnels that led out of it.

There were four large, ornate archways, and one small, roughhewn tunnel only two feet high. Toby had wandered off during their conversation and was squatting in front of the smaller tunnel, peering inside. As they watched, he dropped to all fours and started crawling inside. 

“Toby!” the Doctor yelled, “Be careful!” He trotted over, scanning with his sonic screwdriver. He turned and grinned over his shoulder at Martha. “Well, he does seem to have picked the right tunnel out of here.”

Toby screamed. 

The Doctor sprinted, grabbed him by the ankle, and yanked him out of the tunnel. He whipped the little boy behind his back, right into Martha’s legs, she grabbed the boy and hauled him behind her. He grabbed hold of her legs, hugging tightly. Shaking, thumb in his mouth, he peered nervously out from behind her.

The Doctor stepped back, shoving Martha behind him. 

A creature crawled out of the opening. It was four feet long and two feet wide. It had wide segmented armor plates on its back, and long twitching antennae. It stood up on its hind feet. 

“What are you doing here?” it asked.

Martha almost collapsed with relief. It was a little girl. No, it was a little Tractator. It had a cute little pug puppy face and translucent amber plates on its back. But its manner was pure little girl. A sturdy, curious, little girl.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated, antennae twitching.

“That other Tractator pulled us down,” Martha answered, waving vaguely off behind herself.

The little Tractator signed. “I wish he wouldn’t do that. First the deer, then the berries. The deer was pretty, but scared. I had a heck of a time herding her back to the surface. The berries were good, though.” 

Martha looked at the Doctor nonplussed by this dissertation. The Doctor was standing there with a huge grin on his face, beaming down at the little Tractator as if Peacemas had come early. 

Martha felt a tug on her pantleg. Toby stepped from behind her, one fist bunched in the material of her pant seam. He smiled at the little Tractator from around his thumb. 

“I know you,” the little alien said to the boy. “I’ve seen you up top.” She jerked her little dimpled chin at the ceiling. Not easy to do when you had no neck, Martha observed.

The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned forward. “What’s your name?”

The little alien looked up at him in confusion. “What’s a name?”

Toby popped his wet thumb out of his mouth and pointed at her with it. “Veeni!” He declared loudly.

The little alien turned back and wiggled her antennae at the little human, cocking her head in question.

“I think he means your name should be Veeni. If you don’t have any other name. A name is something other people call you,” the Doctor explained. 

“What others?” she said, turning her attention back to the tall Time Lord. “There’s just me.”

“And the big one,” Martha pointed out. 

“Yes,” the Doctor interrupted, “but, I’m betting he’s not very clever. Is he, Veeni?”

She shook her head, the motion requiring her to waggle her entire body from side to side. “No. He protects me. And he brings me food. But he’s not very smart. He’s nice though.”

“Just as I thought,” the Doctor mused to himself, rubbing his thumb across his chin. He saw Martha’s questioning look out of the corner of his eye. “A Guardian,” he explained. “I always wondered how that worked. If there can be only one Gravis per generation. Then if a new Gravis is born to replace the old one, there has to be someone to take care of it until it matures. If all the Tractators have reverted to animals, there still has to be one to care for the young. Right?” he turned and asked Veeni.

“Huh?” She turned confused and annoyed little girl eyes on this adult who was being deliberately confusing. 

“Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.” The Doctor waved it off airily.

“That’s a very silly thing to do,” the little Gravis said with great dignity. 

Toby detached himself from Martha’s leg and walked up to the little alien. Standing up, she was only a few inches taller than he was, not counting the antennae. “I’m Toby,” he said, thrusting out a trusting little hand. 

Veeni cocked her head at him and twitched her antennae. He wiggled his nose back at her, trying to copy her expression, then he grabbed her little digging claw hand and shook it. “We’re neighbors. You wanna come to my party?”

———————

The tableau was broken up by a sudden pinging noise. 

Martha and the Doctor turned just in time to see Vince stick his head in through one of the other archways. “They’re here!” the young man yelled back over his shoulder.

Vince and Logan and Jack, one of the younger cousins, ran into the chamber.

Logan saw his son standing by the huge insect and ran and snatched him up. “Toby!” he said in horror, putting distance between his son and the monster. 

“Da!” The boy hugged his father with all his might. 

“What is that thing?” Logan demanded with horror and disgust. 

“Hello,” Veeni said.

Logan blinked and stared. It was such a calm young voice. 

“Who’re you?” she said, tipping her head coyly. 

Logan stuttered. 

“This is my da!” Toby said excitedly, leaning eagerly out of his father's arms toward the little alien. He turned back to his father and introduced them. “Da, this is Veeni. She’s my friend.” 

While father and son stared at the little amber alien, Vince and Jack approached the Doctor and Martha, taking a wide loop around the little trio. Vince jerked his head back at the corpse on the other side of the room. “What’s that?” he asked softly, not wanting to break into the tableau of father and son. 

“The previous Gravis,” the Doctor answered. He nodded toward Veeni. “Her father, you could say. How did you find us?” he asked.

Vince grinned and held up the device that had been pinging. “Heat detector. When you didn’t show up after an hour I figured that down here in the cool your heat signature would show up. I ran back to the house, got the detector and Jack and came back. Funny...” he said, looking down at the device. “You’re not showing up as well as the rest of us do.”

“Never mind that,” Martha said. “Do you know the way out of here?”

“Yes.” Vince grinned and held up the detector, showing her the screen. “I’ve been mapping as we went along.”

“And look what we found,” Jack said, holding up a large silver sphere he’d been carrying, it was a foot in diameter. 

The Doctor took it and examined it with a frown. “Where did you get this?”

“A few tunnels back, they were just lying around,” Vince said.

“You can’t have that.” The Doctor looked down to see the little Tractator beside him. She held up her stunty little arms in demand. He gave her the sphere. She waddled over and set it carefully down at the base of the wall. She turned and looked at them, giving the impression that she was crossing her arms sternly, even though her arms were too short to actually cross. 

“You’re not allowed to take the babies,” she said.

Vince’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Those things, they’re...”

“Eggs,” the Doctor said.

—————

“But there were _hundreds_ of them!” Jack said, appalled.

“It makes sense, the Tractators are an insectoid race,” the Doctor said.

“But if all those things hatch out...” Jack still couldn’t take it in. 

“You’ll have _two_ civilizations on this planet,” the Doctor said. Martha detected a note of satisfaction in his voice.

“Considering what you told me about them Doctor, that might not be a good thing,” she pointed out. 

“That was a totally different situation, Martha.”

“What did he tell you?” Logan asked. He walked up carrying his son.

The Doctor was giving her a stern frown, but Martha ignored him and told them anyway. “Tractators drive planets. They strip it of all its resources, turn it into a gravity engine, and drive it through space looking for other planets to seed.”

Vince and Logan looked at each other horrified, then turned to look accusingly at the Doctor.

“It’s not as bad as that,” he said.

“Our home. All we’ve worked for...” Logan trailed off.

"You mean, those things could destroy the planet?” Vince said. “Then we’ve got to destroy the eggs first!” He turned and began stomping back toward the tunnel they’d entered through, back to where he’d seen the eggs.

“No!” The Doctor jumped in front of him, arms spread wide to stop him.

Before Vince could shove him aside, a huge roar, like an enraged boar, reverberated down the tunnel and the giant tractator charged into the room like a runaway freight train. The Doctor was knocked aside, and Vince and the others ran screaming. 

The little Tractator, Veeni, had scrambled aside when her guardian charged in, putting her close to Logan and Toby. The giant spotted her and jumped forward, cutting her away from them. Martha screamed and backpedalled. It was terrifying to see something that size jump as high as she stood. She fell and scrambled backward crabwise on hands and feet, trying to get out of range. She ended up cut out of the herd with Veeni, herded back toward the tunnel entrance by the giant Tractator's huge bulk, the pebbled grey black armor showing all its imperfections and unyielding hardness at this range. She instinctively grabbed Veeni and pulled her aside when the giant’s huge bulk threatened to crush her by accident. The atavistic Tractator saw the motion, and the perceived threat to its gravis, and turned on her, growling like a lion, its huge, frowning face looming toward her. 

“No!”

The little gravis stepped between Martha and the monster. She held up a tiny, delicate little clawed hand, a pebble in front of a boulder. “Stop it!”

Martha shook inside. She could swear this thing got larger every time she saw it. She wanted to grab Veeni and pull her back out of danger, but she didn’t dare touch her. 

The towering Tractator stopped. It looked down at the tiny gravis, her smooth translucent amber shell looked so young and vulnerable compared to his huge boulderlike armor. The giant quivered with the need for action, to reach past her and crush the threat. 

“You, stop,” Veeni said implacably, like she was talking to a large, naughty dog. “No one’s going to hurt me.”

The Doctor sauntered around the end of the huge, tensely quivering monster. “No, Guardian,” he said reassuringly, “No one is going to hurt your Gravis. Or your eggs.” The Doctor cast a significant look at Vince, Jack, and Logan, who were standing scattered around the rest of the massive chamber. 

Slowly, the humans gathered back together. Logan put his son down and turned to the Doctor. “And you want us to share the planet with hundreds of those monsters?”

“They aren’t monsters, Logan,” the Doctor said calmly. He nodded to where Toby and Veeni were standing together talking and giggling. “Is Veeni a monster?” he asked. 

Logan bit down on his reply. His eyes switched from the little, smooth shelled alien to the large, hulking monster behind her. 

“Think about it, Logan,” Martha said. “If the Tractators are capable of being great engineers, then they’re not all going to be like him, are they? Tell him, Doctor,” she urged.

“The Guardian is a throwback, the atavistic form of the Tractator. It’s the gravis that makes them intelligent. She’s the guiding force. Rather like a queen bee.”

“Then we kill her,” Jack said. 

Martha stared at him in horror. 

“Could you?” the Doctor said softly. “Could you really kill a little girl?” He held the younger man’s eyes implacably. Jack looked at Veeni, then glanced at the Doctor and looked away. “Besides,” the Doctor said, “it’s without her that the Tractators become these huge brutes. With her, they are an intelligent, highly civilized, technological race.”

“But you said they ravaged planets. Then went around seeding others,” Vince said, honestly confused. 

“That was different. The planet I originally saw them on had already been stripped of all its resources. There wasn’t even any combustible material left. They had no choice but to take the planet and travel elsewhere. It was either that, or starve. Tractators may be excellent technicians, but they don’t know anything about sustainable agriculture. Dalmorion is a rich planet. And you humans are excellent farmers. You know how to husband your resources, and protect the planet so it remains viable. You can teach them that. And they can help you do it.”

“How?” Jack said.

The Doctor waved around at the huge cathedral chamber around them, and the complex network of tunnels by implication. “You are good at husbanding the surface, but Tractators are experts at subterranean engineering. Just think about it, they can find underground water sources, aerate and help clear land, locate mineral deposits, build tunnels through mountains and build cities underground. Use your imagination, do I really need to spell it out?”

“But,” Logan said, “according to you, she’s the only one left.” He nodded over to the little Tactator who was leading Toby around the room by the hand, showing him the mosaics and carvings on the floor, the large bulk of the Guardian Tractator shambling along beside them, keeping watch on his charge, and a wary eye on the aliens.

“How is she going to learn all this Tractator engineering and knowledge?”

The Doctor held up one long, bony finger. Martha recognized the suppressed twinkle in his eye and wondered what he was up to.

The Doctor loped over to the center of the grand dome and stepped on the one smooth raised stone in the center of the mosaic starmap floor. The orange light dimmed and all the walls disappeared. 

Huge holographic displays of symbols and language, starmaps, and technical schematics, images of other worlds, images of the inner worlds of biology and botany and a hundred other things flowed and manifested across each section of the dome. Separated by the stanchions, the displays seeming to carry on back into the walls, as if you could walk right into the knowledge and go as far back as you wanted. Holograms flowed and danced through the air, with strange smells and wafts of almost subliminal sounds and music. 

"Why did you turn it on?” Veeni asked indignantly from across the room. “It’s not time for teacher yet!”

“Sorry!” the Doctor called back and stepped on the stone again. The orange light went up and the walls returned. 

Vince was standing, staring around, looking gobsmacked. “All that alien knowledge...” he trailed off. 

“Oh, no,” Jack said, smacking a hand on his face and dropping his head in longsuffering. “Here we go again.”

Vince turned around like a man in a dream. His eyes filled with wonder. “I always hoped... I always meant to go for my xenobiology degree, get on one of the research vessels...”

Martha looked at Logan. Logan shrugged and smiled ruefully at her, he nodded at his young cousin. “He’s been fascinated with alien civilizations ever since he was a kid.”

“The knowledge of an entire alien civilization at our fingertips,” Vince mused, staring at the walls. 

“Easy, Vince,” the Doctor said, recognizing an enthusiasm he shared. He'd probably be down here packing a tent at the first opportunity. “We’re not talking about a dead civilization you can just pillage at leisure.” Martha raised her eyebrows at the Doctor’s sarcastic tone. “I don’t like archeologists,” the Doctor confided in an aside. 

“What we have here,” he continued to Vince and the others, “is a civilization in hiatus. Through Veeni it can rise again. Bring its diversity to add to the mosaic of life in the universe. But only if she’s allowed to live in peace.”

“But Doctor,” Logan said. His eyes shifted around uncomfortably. He took in the huge beautiful room, he looked to where Veeni and Toby were now crouched down examining the mummy of the previous Gravis. He worried that it might be too gruesome for his son, but he didn’t seem to be bothered, he looked interested, and it obviously didn’t bother Veeni, who had apparently never known her predecessor.

“According to Interstellar Law, humans are not allowed to colonize a planet that already has an intelligent species.” He looked at the Doctor with haunted eyes. “Our home. Everything my family has worked for... We’ll lose everything. The government will make us leave. Unless you can prove we were here first?” Logan said hopefully. 

“I doubt it,” the Doctor said, regretfully shaking his head. “Some of the tunnels we’ve seen here. This hall. I doubt it was all built after your father started to colonize.”

“But,” Logan protested. “Why didn’t any of it show up on the scans?”

“Gravitically shielded,” the Doctor said, offhand, “makes it look like solid rock.

"But that hardly matters,” the Doctor said. “Granted, you’ve no right to push a species off their own world.” He leaned forward. “But you can’t leave a little girl alone on a planet with a hundred babies, can you? That’s not responsible behavior either. There’s bound to be a middle ground.”

“Besides,” Vince put in enthusiastically, “experts from all over are going to want to come here and study this! We won’t be able to _keep_ people away!”

“Precisely!” the Doctor said, stabbing the air with a long finger for emphasis. “So the problem isn’t whether or not you both can live on the planet, but rather _how_ you can both live on the planet.”

“The politicians aren’t going to like this,” Logan predicted.

“Or the conservation groups,” Jack put in. 

“So?” the Doctor said irrepressibly. “Finding answers isn’t the hard part. All you have to do is find the right questions.” He turned and waved a hand at Toby and Veeni.

Toby’s young voice rang out across the hall. “So are you gonna come for Peacemas?”

\------

Veeni accompanied the humans back to their farm, Guardian having been persuaded to remain behind and guard the eggs. Martha had asked how that was possible, since the gravis was the important one. But the Doctor confided that while Tractators weren’t exactly telepathic, their antennae could detect various pheromones and energy patterns that proved that the humans were no longer a threat. Besides, the Doctor grinned at her as they fell behind the others on the forest path on the way back to the house, “He’s probably following along underneath us. He can always snatch her back down if anything happens, just like he took Toby.” Martha nodded. Apparently, the Guardian was getting smarter faster than she expected.

When they reached the house, they explained the situation to Marta and the others. It took Marta a while to stop hugging her son. But he was so obviously okay, and wiggling so hard to be put down to play, that it allayed her fears. 

As the others sat and argued at the outdoor table behind her, Marta watched as Veeni and Toby chased a ball in the yard in front of the house, one on four feet one on two, bumping the ball back and forth to each other, until Veeni stood up and threw the ball to Toby, both of them laughing. 

“I suppose we could adopt her,” Marta said. Everyone stared at her. 

She turned to them. “According to Colonial Law, any child orphaned by disease, attack, misfortune or other causes may be adopted and given citizenship status. The child retains all rights to its families homestead. Homestead being defined as land the family has held and improved, including all buildings, machines, and appurtenances thereto.” She turned and looked at her husband. “If we adopt her, she becomes a Federation citizen. That would solve all the legal problems wouldn't it?”

Logan stared at his wife. She shrugged. “I looked it up when Toby was born.”

Logan blinked, and thought about it. He turned and caught the eyes of each of the rest of his family one by one. Slowly, they looked at the children, playing together so peacefully, then solemnly nodded back. Logan turned to the Doctor. “You know, that might work.

"Chase is the Colonial Governor,” Logan continued. “He’s coming to the party tonight, and to Peacemas Dinner.”

“Awp!” Marta exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “Dinner!” She looked at the lowering sun and the lengthening shadows crawling across the yard. “Inside, everybody!” she shooed everyone before her like a hen with a gaggle of recalcitrant chicks. “Dinner doesn’t make itself!”

 

Martha was set to washing the good crystal, to be sure there was no dust or spots. Logan was set to preparing a huge avian, filling it with stuffing and tying its legs together (Martha had never seen a bird with so many legs before. It must reduce arguments over who got the drumsticks.) The in-laws and cousins scattered to their various tasks, other foods and casseroles being prepared in the smaller bunkhouse and dower house kitchens. 

The Doctor, Martha was amused to see, had been set to peeling a huge mound of potatoes. She smirked as she dried a large punchbowl with a lintless flannel towel. Here at least was something the sonic screwdriver _didn’t_ do.

Veeni and Toby had been set to washing a huge quantity of greens by dunking them in wooden rainwater barrels outside the back kitchen door. Both children were enjoying themselves, getting soaking wet. This appeared to be an activity that Veeni understood, and she dunked her clawed little digger hands into the greens filled barrels with a will. 

Suddenly there was a huge crash from outside. 

“Good heavens!” Marta exclaimed and ran out the back door. The Doctor, Martha, and Logan followed her.

Toby and Veeni stood outside looking up with surprise at a car stuck in the top of a tree at the edge of the clearing. 

“Oh, Peacemas Night! Oh, Peacemas Night!” sang a drunken, and surprisingly loud voice from the canted cab of the disc shaped hovercraft. Limbs creaked and snapped ominously beneath it. 

A sleek silver and black hovercraft whirred up to the back of the house and parked. A lean, blue haired man jumped out and ran toward the tree frantically, having enough presence of mind to stop before he was under the suspended vehicle.

“Marie!” he yelled up through cupped hands, amplifying his voice over the loud singing that was still coming from inside the cab. “ _Marie_!”

“Daddy!” a young woman’s voice yelled back.

“Are you all right?” he yelled.

“I’m pinned! I can’t get out!”

“How lovely are your...” the loud voice crooned, drowning her out in drunken splendor.

“Oh, shut up!” There was the sound of a slap and the singing cut off abruptly.

The main limb beneath them cracked with a sound like a gunshot. The vehicle lurched. The woman screamed, her father jumped back. The limb canted toward the ground, its base splintered, the limb dragging. Only the cage of branches kept them from slipping. 

“How are we going to get them down?” Martha asked, turning toward the Doctor. “Can they tow it with the other cars?”

The Doctor shook his head. “They’re just hovercraft. They’re not even supposed to be able to get up that high.” 

The cousins came charging around the building to see what had happened. “Jack!” Logan yelled. “Go get the tractor crane from the garage. We...”

He stopped as he saw Veeni calmly approach the groaning tree. The straining limb splintered further with a series of popping sounds like huge tearing lace. The vehicle started to slide.

“Daddeeee!” the woman screamed. 

The limb broke completely away. Veenie’s antennae wiggled. The crumpled passenger vehicle was encompassed in a staticy yellow haze, and drifted slowly to the ground. 

——————

It took several hours of explanations and negotiations, with the Doctor, Vince, and Logan taking the Governor down to see the Tractators' Hall before everything was decided. It helped that the little Tractator had saved the governor’s daughter’s life. 

“But how do we know she won’t grow up to become the menace you describe?” the governor asked the Doctor.

The Doctor tilted an eyebrow. “How do you know Toby won’t grow up to be a menace?”

“Because,” the governor responded hotly, “Logan will raise him right!” The man stopped, hearing his own words. He looked at Logan, who was grinning at him with arms crossed; he’d already had this conversation with the Doctor. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor said.

Chase ran his hands through his blue hair. “It’s my job to safeguard this planet. I have my constituents to protect.”

“If Logan adopts Veeni, then the Tractators _are_ your constituents,” the Doctor pointed out. 

“But how do I know something won’t still go wrong? How do I know it wouldn’t be better just to stop it all now?” Chase asked.

“You don’t,” the Doctor said. “But then, none of us do.” He leaned forward earnestly. “You can’t predict the future. Even I can’t do that. No matter what choice you make, there’s the risk things will turn out badly, and the possibility things will turn out well. The only question you are really facing here, is what choice can you will live with - every day - for the rest of your life.”

——————

Dinner went off without a hitch, when they finally got it prepared. Toby sat at the table beside Veeni who stood, since Tractators couldn’t bend to sit the way humans did, and whispered explanations and instructions to her, telling her all about Peacemas, and how to use her fork. 

As the sun set more and more guests started arriving. Everyone was surprised to see the little Tractator, and the story circulated quickly. There was some unease, but it was set aside in the spirit of the holiday. 

And as midnight approached, everyone gathered outside in the courtyard lawn in front of the house. The stars were shining but it was a clear, moonless night. All the colonists formed a semicircle in the darkness, facing Logan and Chase who stood in front of the house. Marta turned off the house lights and stepped out onto the porch. 

Darkness fell, and individuals in the crowd became mere moving outlines in the dimness as people shuffled to get the best view.

Martha stood by the Doctor, virtually blind in the darkness. But her vision adjusted enough to see the Doctor rummage in his pocket and pull out his 3D glasses. He held the sonic screwdriver down beside his pantleg, trying not to draw attention to it. The light blinked as he buzzed the glasses, realigning the molecules of the lenses. He plopped the white blur of the cardboard glasses on Veeni’s little pug nose. 

“What’s that in aid of?” Martha whispered. 

The Doctor slipped his sonic screwdriver back in his pocket. “Tractators are subterranean creatures. Adapted to darkness. Sudden bright lights can be damaging to their eyes.”

“Ah.”

Martha leaned out and looked around the Doctor to where Veeni and Toby stood beside him. The little boy was hopping and clapping with excitement. Veeni had caught it, her little hard-shelled person was bouncing slightly in sympathetic excitement, her head craning around, looking at all the things the human’s eyes were too weak to see, the white cardboard glasses completely incongruous on her wrinkled little alien face.

“Welcome to the Festival of Lights!” Logan said dramatically, and hit the power switch. 

Hundreds of thousands of lights sprang on, all at once. Every curve, every angle, every tree and eave was outlined and highlighted and crisscrossed with lights.

“Ooh!” Veeni leaned forward, trying to see everything simultaneously. 

Holographic swirling patterns of light played on all the windows. The bunkhouse and dower house, on opposite sides of the square, were decked out with lights and covered with artificial snow on the roofs. A huge tree behind the dower house was festooned with long streamers of lights that draped down to meet the peak and corners of the dower house roof, lit images of elves and snowflakes, slid down from branches to rooftop. A mechanical elf decoration slid down the lines, hit the rooftop in a sprawl and curled up in a ball to roll the rest of the way, bumping, down the roof. Just before he plummeted off the edge he uncurled and rolled to a stop, sitting on the edge of the roof. He held up a tankard of beer, in a cheerful drunken salute. “Happy Peacemas!” he declared in ringing artificial tones, and started singing, “Peacemas time, Peacemas time, Peacemas time is here...”

Everyone laughed, and a few people poked the governor’s daughter’s fiancee playfully.

“I don’t remember putting those up,” Martha whispered to the Doctor.

“Seems like Jeremy has been busy,” he answered.

“Jeremy?”

“The other cousin.”

Martha shrugged ruefully. Naturally he would know. 

“The Saint!” Toby squealed. Hopping up and down, he pointed to the roof of the bunkhouse behind them. The lights had been arranged on the opposite side of the roof here, leaving the roof black, but sending up a bright, multicolored glow from the other side. At the top of the roof, at the crest of the ridge, a plastic cutout of a thin, longlegged man, with a heavy bag over his shoulder, was backlit as he snuck into the bunkhouse with one foot in the chimney.

Martha laughed and poked the Doctor. He grinned, shyly. Toby jumped up and down then turned to look at the Doctor with a wicked little conspiratorial grin on his face. 

Martha laughed out loud. 

“The Festival of the Lights is one of the oldest of the Peacemas traditions,” Chase intoned from the front step of the house which was now a brilliant fairytale arbor dripping with lights. “On the darkest days of the year, our ancestors would light fires, and candles, and lanterns to beat back the darkness. But as mankind ventured out into space, we learned that _we_ are the lights in the darkness. In all that vast darkness between worlds, we had only ourselves to illuminate our lives. And as each light is different, so each of us is different. Like the lights, we come in all different colors, and sizes, and shapes. And it’s only by all of us shining together, working together in peace, each one separate, but all of us connected, that we are able to push back the darkness. 

“That message comes to mean more tonight. For tonight we have a new light to add to the collection.” Chase held out his hand, and beckoned Veeni. The little Tractator waddled quickly forward, the cardboard glasses on her face giving her a comical air, but the lights glowing off her translucent amber carapace making her beautiful.

Chase dropped his hands to where her shoulders would be, “This is Veeni, she’s the last currently living survivor of a race that once colonized Dalmorion. She, and her unborn siblings, have been adopted by Logan and Marta. Please welcome her as your new neighbor, in the spirit of Peace and Generosity that is Peacemas.”

—————

After welcoming Veeni and admiring the lights, everyone trooped back into the house, congratulating Logan and Marta and Toby on their new family member. There was a quick run on the snack tables, and a more discreet run, as one by one groups and individuals snuck away to retrieve packages from their hiding places. 

Martha was surprised to find the Doctor hustling her up the stairs by her elbow, back into their borrowed room. He dropped down and wiggled under the bed, only his pinstriped legs poking out, as he dug out a pile of packages and pushed them to her one by one. 

There was a brightly wrapped package for every member of their host family. Every one of them was badly wrapped, Martha noticed, wondering how to straighten out holographic wrapping paper.

“When did you do this?” Martha asked, remembering the suspicion she’d had that he’d snuck back to the Tardis the night before. 

“Yeah, well,” he blushed a bit, clumsily gathering up a huge armload of packages, “I never could sleep the night before Peacemas.”

She laughed and scooped up her own armful, following him as he trooped downstairs with their bounty. 

—————

They didn’t know anyone except Logan and his family, and it didn’t matter a jot. It was still the best Christmas party she’d ever been to.

Martha smoothed her hand down the soft, baby-wool cardigan that Marta had given her when the gifts were exchanged.

They’d talked to everyone and ate snacks, and drank punch, and the Doctor had played Toby’s toys with him and explained them to Veeni, and eventually they’d washed up here, sitting next to the fire, the Doctor sprawled in the rocking chair he’d sat in last night. 

“What I don’t get, Doctor,” Martha said as she idly watched people sitting and talking in groups, exchanging a last few presents, “is if the Tractators are herbivores like you implied, why did that one drag me down through the floor? Toby I can understand, he was draped in garlands, but why me?”

“Probably because Veeni was lonely,” the Doctor answered.

Martha gave him a puzzled shake of her head. 

“Veeni’s not old enough to control the Tractators directly yet but I’m betting it could still instinctively feel her loneliness. I’m guessing you were like the deer. A playmate for her. Something to stop her being lonely.”

Martha gave a lopsided grin, “I don’t know whether to be charmed or insulted, being compared to a deer,” she said with chagrin.

“Oh, charmed, definitely. You’re both beautiful, graceful creatures,” he said carelessly, idly watching the crowd.

It was remarks like that that made her love him. And the offhand, thoughtless way he said it that made her realize he didn’t even know what he’d done. The rat. 

She changed the subject. “Veeni doesn’t actually speak English does she?” Martha asked.

“No,” the Doctor replied. “For that matter, none of them speak standard English. That’s the Tardis translator circuits.”

“Thought so. So what’s going to happen when we leave?”

“Ah. That’s why I gave her the necklace.” He nodded to the pendant necklace that was hung awkwardly around her “neck,” over the top of her head and under the first groove of her plates. “It will help her translate until she gets used to the language. She’s perfectly capable of _speaking_ English, once she learns how.”

“You know,” Martha said speculatively. “For a while there, I was sure you were going to pop off somewhere and get Toby a puppy.”

“Nah. A sister’s much better than a puppy.“ He grinned at her. 

“Ah! Marta!” he said as their hostess came up, plump and pretty in a teal blue holiday dress. “Brilliant party! This is the best Peacemas party I’ve been to in centuries!” He waved his hands expansively.

Marta grinned, and Martha could see why Logan had fallen in love with her. 

“Thank you, Doctor. I’m glad you decided to stay. It’s not every year I get a new daughter and a new future for Peacemas.” She looked over to where Toby and Veeni where sitting on the stone fireplace hearth. Both children had been given traditional floral garlands as necklaces. Toby was wearing his proudly; Veeni was eating hers. 

Marta grinned and turned back to the Doctor. She held out a small wrapped parcel. “This is for you.”

The Doctor sat bolt upright, a bright eyed, eager look on his face. “A present? For me?”

Marta nodded and handed it to him. He took it with a sort of reverence. Marta was called away. He turned and showed it to Martha with a little dazed smile. 

“Maybe you should open it,” Martha pointed out.

He jerked awake. “Open it. Yes!” He tore off the paper with all the aplomb of a three year old. He opened the little box and pulled out two long tubes of material.

Socks.

Long, slinky socks with thick horizontal red and yellow stripes.

“Seuss Socks!” 

The Doctor yelled in delight and pushed them at Martha as if he’d just been given the crown jewels. “Look, Martha, Seuss Socks!” He shucked off his trainers and whipped the gaudy socks on over his long bony feet. He stuck his legs out, leaned back, and smiled down at his feet in utter delight. The pointy tip of the socks flopped down at the end.

He wiggled his toes. 

Martha couldn’t help but grin. “Happy Peacemas, Doctor,” she said.

He rolled his head on the chairback and gave her that devastating little boy grin. “Happy Peacemas, Martha.”

The End.

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